


know that i'm yours (to keep)

by singsongsung



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/F, Twyla Sands' Freckles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26397565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singsongsung/pseuds/singsongsung
Summary: Five times Alexis and Twyla talk at Café Tropical.And one time they talk somewhere else.
Relationships: Alexis Rose/Twyla Sands
Comments: 21
Kudos: 105
Collections: Elevate! A Schitt's Creek Femslash Exchange





	know that i'm yours (to keep)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hullomoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hullomoon/gifts).



> Big thank yous to: my sweet, sweet beta reader, the Twyla to my Alexis, standing behind a figurative cafe counter doling out excellent nuggets of wisdom in response to all my whining about writing; and another_Hero and earlylight for putting together this absolutely fantastic exchange!
> 
> Title taken from "The Girl" by City and Colour.

**one.**

Alexis has done a lot of things in her life, and she’s done many of them several times over.

She’s been a beard to three different men, though only one of them was actually relevant enough in the zeitgeist of the moment for her photo to end up on gossip sites a few times a week. She’s sneaked two different miniature ponies over two different international borders. She’s dated the stars of eight different CW network dramas. She’s been involved in four throuples (which, really, was three too many - a lesson she should’ve learned after the first). She’s been to Suriname thrice, sat front row at Paris Fashion Week five different times, been what might technically be considered ‘a hostage’ (if you ask David, which she does not, because he was totally overreacting) on seven occasions, and slept with Zac Efron on way more summer nights than she should’ve, because he started to get sort of attached, poor thing.

One thing she has _not_ done numerous times in her twenty-seven years? Apologize.

When something goes wrong and it may or may not be her fault, Alexis is not exactly in the habit of shouldering the blame. When someone is angry with her, she brushes off their accusations or pouts until their tone softens again. When she acts in a way that might, just maybe, be considered _hurtful_ , she doesn’t dwell on her own behaviour, and instead moves on with a charming tilt of her head and a laugh, or to a new destination that takes her away from the sight of a disappointed face and eventually erases it from her memory altogether.

She says sorry to her brother, sometimes. Adelina used to be able to extract an apology from her in a single glance, but it’s been a long time since Adelina’s been around to nudge Alexis in directions that might be labelled _good_ instead of _bratty_ , _fulfilling_ instead of _dangerous_ , and consequently, it’s been a long time since Alexis said the word _sorry_ in a tone of voice that wasn’t both defensive and sarcastic.

Today, she intends to change that, which is why she’s standing in front of Café Tropical, hovering on the sidewalk nervously like she’s waiting to deplane a private jet at an airfield peppered with members of the paparazzi and her in-flight undereye masks haven’t quite made good on their packaging’s promises.

“Mmkay,” she murmurs to herself. She gives her curled hair one last fluff with a hand, smooths out the fabric of her dress - it’s gauzy and azure, with flowy sleeves, chosen carefully because she thinks it’s the kind of thing Twyla might wear, or at least might like - and marches into the café with purpose.

As always, Twyla’s behind the counter, sorting dirty dishes into piles. The sleeves of her floral blouse are rolled up neatly to just below her elbows. Her ponytail bounces lightly against her shoulder as she turns her head.

“Hey, Alexis!” she says sunnily. “Fruit cup?”

“ _Totally_ ,” Alexis says as she slides onto a stool. “I mean - no. Well, yes, but no, because I’m really here to talk to you?” Her words rise at the end of her sentence, turning her explicit goal into an uncertain question.

Twyla’s brow furrows. “So no fruit cup?”

“Yes,” Alexis says. “Yes to a fruit cup.” She folds her hands atop the counter, trying to look somewhat official. “But more importantly, yes to talking to you.” She drops one hand to the stool next to the one she’s sitting on, patting it lightly. “Maybe you could come here for a second?”

“Oh, it’s just - I’m in the middle of my shift right now.” It’s not the first time, or even the second, that Twyla’s had to remind Alexis that she’s in the middle of a workday, but her tone is as sweet as ever, a boundary firmly but pleasantly established.

“Right,” Alexis says. “Right. Well, we can talk like this, I guess, right? I just wanted to say - ”

“I just have to give Doris her bill,” Twyla says, ripping a sheet off her order pad. “And Grace and her mom just came in, so I’m going to grab their order.”

“I can wait,” Alexis says, and then corrects herself, says more emphatically, “I _will_ wait. Take your time!” she adds, over her shoulder, as Twyla moves out from behind the counter and toward Doris’ table.

Twyla hands Doris her bill and stands by the table, hands folded patiently in front of her little apron, as Doris rummages in her purse and struggles to unzip her wallet with her arthritic fingers. Twyla’s smile is fixed easily on her face, not a hint of strain in it. She gently declines Doris’ tip with a comment that Alexis can’t hear, but it makes Doris smile warmly up at her.

Alexis turns back toward the counter, fingers knotting together in her lap. For most of her life, she’s thought of herself as a nice person - she never hesitates to rescue a friend who’s found herself in an unfortunate situation with a drug dealer in the UAE; she takes back philandering boyfriends - but she’s not nice the way someone like Twyla is nice, nice without conditions, nice for the sake of niceness and nothing more. The circles she ran in from the first day of kindergarten, skipping through the doors of her prestigious private school in her plaid skirt, eager to make friends besides her boring older brother - nicety was a tool in those circles, and when it wasn’t being used with precision, it was a weakness, blood in the water, easily sniffed out.

Her old friends would’ve eaten Twyla alive. Alexis doesn’t want to do that: she can see Twyla’s forthright sweetness for what it is, not a tactic of any kind, not a veneer, but a cornerstone of her character, and even more surprisingly, one that seems to lend her strength. Around Twyla, Alexis feels tempted to rise to the level of her goodness, to meet it with her own, but the effort sometimes makes her brain feel like it’s buzzing, makes her posture feel awkward, and she ends up searching for parameters in a conversation in which there don’t seem to be any. Sometimes she sets her own, and they’re wrong; sometimes she falls back into old habits.

Today, she just wants to do what Twyla always seems to do. She wants to say what she means: no qualifications, no amendments, no excuses.

Twyla returns, hands off an order to George, collects Alexis’ fruit cup from the window, and sets it in front of her.

Alexis flashes her a small smile. Her chest feels weirdly heavy, and her palms are sweating, so she doesn’t pick up the spoon. “Thanks, Twy.”

Cloth and spray bottle in hand, ready to wipe down the counter, Twyla pauses, the corners of her smile twitching downward and a tiny wrinkle appearing between her eyebrows. “You wanted to talk?” she prompts, her eyes traveling over Alexis’ face.

“Yes.” Alexis takes a breath and nods. “Yeah. I wanted to talk about Mutt.”

Twyla’s smile dims further, which makes the heaviness in Alexis’ chest feel even more dense and weighty. “Alexis,” she says, softly. “I don’t really think - ”

“No!” Alexis cuts in quickly, and probably too loudly. She lowers her voice as she says, “No, I don’t mean, like, _about_ Mutt. I mean about you and Mutt, and me and Mutt, and - ” Twyla’s expression is unchanged, and Alexis sighs. “I’m not saying this right. I did what you said, last night. I took time for me, and I think it was good. I did a mask and a _Cosmo_ quiz online and I even dusted, which was kind of fun, actually? Stevie gave me one of those little feathery things.” She rolls her lips together anxiously. “Anyway, I had a lot of time to think, you know, about stuff? About what you said yesterday. About how… I kind of told you to break up with Mutt, and then _I_ dated Mutt, and how it probably seemed like I wanted you two to break up so I could have him.” She looks into Twyla’s eyes. “Right?”

One side of Twyla’s mouth gives a little twitch. She shrugs before her chin dips down in something that could be construed as a nod.

“Right,” Alexis agrees softly, glancing down at the counter. Her neck feels hot. “I’m sorry. I want you to know that I’m sorry. Twy, I… I liked him, yeah. But I wasn’t - I _really_ wasn’t trying to… When I told you what I told you, about the whole thing with the song, I - I really didn’t want you to get hurt.” She lifts her gaze to Twyla’s face again. She wants, so very badly, for Twyla to understand that both these things are true: she was lusting after Mutt, and she would’ve preferred him single, but the thought of Twyla pouring out every bit of her heart to someone who didn’t want it was painful to imagine, painful enough that Alexis felt compelled to stop it, before real damage could be done to Twyla ever-present smile.

Twyla sets down the cloth and spray bottle and presses her palm to the counter, her fingertips a couple inches away from the edge closest to where Alexis is sitting. “Thanks for saying that, Alexis,” she says simply. Her smile doesn’t bloom fully again, but the bud of it is there, dancing across her lips, tugging the corners of her mouth upward.

Alexis nods back at her, beginning to toy with the spoon next to her fruit cup. “It’s just... the truth,” she says, matching Twyla’s sincerity.

With a nod of her own, her hand still flat against the counter, Twyla says, “I believe you, Alexis,” and the weight in Alexis’ chest loosens, lightens, feels like it drifts away.

**two.**

After her girls’ night with Twyla at The Wobbly Elm, Alexis wakes up with sore eyes. She cried a little after she got into bed the night before, when she was all alone and curled up under the beigey-pink motel blanket that she’s grown weirdly attached to. Her mother was kind to her, outside the bar: it was probably the most significant moment of understanding Alexis has ever shared with her mom, Moira’s eyes soft with liquor and empathy. But once she was by herself, she _felt_ by herself, felt her solitariness acutely. She thought of David, happy with Patrick; of Ted, happy with Heather; of Twyla, happy off somewhere with the guy she picked up; even of Mutt, happy with Tallahassee in a forest full of pine trees. And there she was, in her single-person-sized bed, aching for the things she’d refused to let herself feel when she’d had the chance.

“Feeling sorry for yourself is _not_ a cute look,” she mumbles, to herself and to the ceiling.

She wants to burrow back under the covers and sleep until noon, but she forces herself to slide her legs off the bed and get to her feet. In the bathroom, she wets a washcloth with cool water and presses it over her eyes. She decides to go for a morning run, craving the endorphins, which makes getting dressed easy enough - or, at least, it should. Unless she’s wearing a matching set, Alexis usually pulls her workout clothes on in careless combinations, but she knows that she’ll probably want to swing by the café toward the end of her run for a cup of tea, which means she’ll see Twyla, and for some reason, as she stands considering the messy contents of her wardrobe, that feels important. She doesn’t want to show up looking like she cried herself to sleep while Twyla was getting it on with her soccer-playing, quarry-working hottie. She wants to show up fresh-faced and wearing a cute outfit, and while she drinks her tea she’ll pester Twyla for all the details like a good friend.

She chooses one of her running skirts and a silvery sports bra; it’s warm enough out, even this early in the day, that she forgoes a shirt. After sticking in her earbuds and turning up Rihanna, she takes off on her usual route through the back streets of Schitt’s Creek, some of which aren’t even paved, just dusty roads that amble slowly out of the town limits.

Her feet drum against the ground rhythmically as she sets her usual pace, but something feels off. The roads seem to tilt and tip beneath her, wavering up ahead. She thinks she must be hungover before she remembers that she only had half a drink.

By the time she circles around to the far end of the town’s main street, she’s walking, earbuds still in but music off, the pattern of her breathing not quite even. Her eyes still hurt, and there’s a feeling lingering between her ribs that might be called yearning. She arrives at the café in an unpleasant mood, wishing for a long, hot bubble bath in a soaker tub, feeling preemptively dissatisfied by the cup of tea she’ll have to settle for.

Her eyes seek Twyla out immediately, and find Twyla where she can dependably be found, at the counter, ringing someone up. Alexis’ eyes scan over Twyla, seeking telltale signs: hair that still holds some of the previous night’s hairsprayed curls, not-quite-erased smudges of eyeshadow beneath her eyes, a scarf looped around her neck to hide a hickey.

She doesn’t detect any. Twyla’s hair is down around her shoulders, bouncy, freshly washed; her eyes are bright, well-rested, not a hint of makeup around them. The t-shirt she’s wearing has a neck wide enough that Alexis can see her freckled collarbones. Twyla appears to have spent some portion of the previous night at her own place, rather than hurrying home in the morning.

“ _Hey_ , girl,” Alexis says, when the customer at the counter leaves and she’s left directly in Twyla’s eyeline. She sidles up to the register and gives her eyebrows a here-for-the-goss wiggle. “You look happy this morning,” she says in a meaningfully lowered voice.

“Oh,” Twyla says, blinking. “I - ” She seems to lose her sentence as soon as it starts, her hands grasping the edges of her apron like she needs something to hold onto. Her gaze slips off Alexis’ face, moving downward and focusing on the far end of the counter, which Alexis is trying to inch even closer to without actually letting its edge brush her bare stomach.

“Oh, _no_ , Twy,” Alexis says when the silence lasts for several seconds. She grimaces sympathetically, her tone even more hushed as she asks, “Was it _bad_?”

Twyla’s eyes fly back up. “What?”

“The… you know.” Alexis gives her shoulders the most sensual shimmy she thinks the café’s patrons can handle. “Or - ” She tips her head even closer to Twyla’s. “Was he a jerk? Because, listen, Twy, I haven’t even told you how many people I know in the Québécois maple syrup mafia, and I can totally - ”

“No,” Twyla says, reaching across the counter and grabbing one of Alexis’ flailing hands. “No, he wasn’t a jerk. He was fine.”

“Fine?” Alexis repeats. Twyla releases her hand, and she gives her fingers a little flex.

“Yeah.” Twyla shrugs. “He was nice and everything. We made out for a little while, but… I don’t know.” She offers up a cheerful smile. “I guess I just wasn’t really feeling it! You want tea?”

“Um.” It takes Alexis’ brain a moment to catch up with the question. “Yeah. Please.”

Twyla nods, and strolls off, back into the kitchen.

The café’s not very busy. Once Twyla’s set a steaming mug in front of Alexis, she pulls a bin of nearly-empty salt and pepper shakers closer to her, and hauls big containers of each out from beneath the counter to refill them. Alexis holds the little glass shakers steady for her, grains of salt and flakes of pepper drifting over her fingers.

Twyla asks if anything happened with the guy she pointed out to Alexis, the one at the other end of the bar who was checking her out. Alexis gives her head a small shake, and waits for questions, but they never come. Twyla just sets down the big container of table salt and _looks_ at her, such softness in her eyes that Alexis feels laid bare, every bit as vulnerable as she’d been perched on the hood of a car the previous night, talking to an answering machine.

“I…” Alexis swallows. “I wasn’t really feeling it, either.”

“That’s okay,” Twyla says. “You know that, right?”

Alexis nods, but she sighs, too. “I hate being sad, Twy,” she confesses quietly.

“Me too.” Twyla starts screwing a cap onto a pepper shaker. “I try not to be.”

“You’re good at it.”

Twyla laughs softly. “Most days,” she agrees. “Not always.”

Alexis wonders what Twyla does when she feels sad, how she works through it, lets it go, steps out on the other side. She thinks about asking, but doesn’t. It’s occurred to her recently that she spends a lot of her time settled on stools at the café waiting for something from Twyla: a smoothie, a nugget of wisdom, a burst of undivided attention.

She holds out one final empty shaker, and Twyla fills it with salt. Together, they set the shakers out onto tables. When Alexis returns to her tea, the last few sips of it have gone cold, and she knows she could use a shower, so she asks Twyla for her bill.

“On the house,” Twyla says with a wink, grabbing a cloth to wipe off the counter.

Alexis smiles at her. It’s not a particularly big smile - no teeth - but she can feel it in her whole face. She gives the salt-and-pepper-speckled counter a tap. “Thanks, Twy.”

Outside, the sun is higher and hotter. It warms Alexis’ shoulders immediately, and she feels so much different than she did less than an hour ago, centered and settled. Nothing’s changed with Ted or his older, beautiful, faithful girlfriend, but it appears that something’s changed with her.

The sidewalk, despite its cracks, is firm, unwavering. It holds her, resolutely, upright. Her sneakers bounce against it, her feet eager to move more, to move faster.

She runs the whole way home.

**three.**

Alexis wins Sleepy Mommy with practiced ease, spikes her glass of soda using the flask of gin Stevie stealthily hands her, and hangs out at Jocelyn’s baby shower until her parents are ready to leave. Most of the other guests have already filtered out, leaving behind empty chip bowls and brightly-coloured gift bags. David’s going to stay (“Apparently,” he says, with one corner of his mouth pinched, “I also volunteered to clean up.”), and Alexis knows without having to ask that he’ll go back to Patrick’s after, so she follows her parents out to the car and slips into the backseat.

As they pass Bob’s Garage, Alexis sees that the windows at Café Tropical are still half-lit. Through them, she can see the legs of chairs sticking upright from where they’ve been set up on tables, and the distinct green of Twyla’s shirt, the swish of her coppery hair.

She shuffles forward and leans up between the driver’s and passenger seats. “Can you drop me off here?”

“Here?” her father asks, not stopping the car.

“Yes,” Alexis says. “Like, _now_ , Dad?”

As he finally slows down, pulling up against the curb, Moira asks, “Whatever for, Alexis?”

“Twy’s still at the café. I’m going to get a cup of tea.”

Her mother turns to look at her, lips slightly pursed. “We do have a kettle at the motel, you know. It could be advantageous for you to learn to pour thermogenic water over a teabag on your own.”

“The place looks like it’s closed, honey,” Johnny adds. “The best customer is one who respects business hours and - ”

“Oh my _god_ ,” Alexis says, putting an end to the conversation by opening the door and stepping out of the car. “Bye!”

As she jogs across the street, her father rolls down his window so her mother can yell, “Should we wait for you?”

“Go home!” Alexis yells back on a breathless laugh. The strangeness of having her parents invested in and so deeply _present_ in her life still sort of bowls her over sometimes, with its mixture of joy and frustration and the overwhelming sense that she means something to them, right down to her casual choices, like the one leading her up the steps to the café’s door.

Twyla’s sweeping. She turns around when Alexis comes in, beginning to chirp, “Sorry, we’re - ” And then her grip on the broom slackens a little, and she says, in her voice without its customer-service coating, “Alexis. Hi.”

“Hey, Twy.” Alexis weaves her way in between tables, feeling like she should be tiptoeing so as not to dirty the freshly-swept floor. “I didn’t realize that when you left the baby shower you were coming back here.”

“George couldn’t close up today,” Twyla says, with an unbothered shrug - or at least, a shrug Alexis would normally assume was unbothered, but she spots just a bit of tension in it, a tightness in the movement of Twyla’s shoulders.

“That sucks,” Alexis says sympathetically.

“Oh, it’s okay,” Twyla says, and she sounds like she means it. “I’ve never been to a baby sprinkle before, so I’m glad I didn’t have to miss the whole thing. Did Jocelyn open her gifts?”

“Not before we left.” Alexis feels a little awkward, just hovering between tables, so she carefully perches on the edge of one, in a small space unoccupied by upside-down chairs. “Probably for the best - we tried to order onesies from Amazon but the package got sent back because they couldn’t seem to find the motel. Did you bring a gift?”

Twyla nods. “A toy. A rubber chicken with a really long, floppy neck - I think it’s a dog toy, actually, but I had one when I was little and I _loved_ it. I took it everywhere.”

Alexis smiles softly, something akin to guilt twisting up her stomach for a moment as she thinks of her childhood nursery, full to the brim with teddy bears and dollhouses, none of which she had any particular attachment to. “That’s really sweet,” she says earnestly.

“Hopefully the baby likes it,” Twyla agrees. She leans the broom against the side of a booth and brushes her hands along her thighs like she’s dusting them off. Alexis can see, again, the stiffness in how Twyla’s moving. Twyla tucks her hands into the back pockets of her jeans, like she needs somewhere to put them, and says, “So.”

“So,” Alexis says, and then waits for more. It takes her a full ten seconds to realize that Twyla’s getting at something, that she’s looking at Alexis expectantly, almost dispiritedly. Her heart does a weird thing; it feels like it’s buzzing rather than beating as she tries to decipher the expression on Twyla’s face. Then she gasps and brings her hands up to her neck, fingers pressing against her jaw, a gesture that means oh-no-this-is-so-awkward, and asks, “Ohmygod, did I forget to pay for brunch yesterday?!”

“No, you remembered,” Twyla says. She waits for Alexis to say something more, and when she’s met with silence, hedges, “I just - I figured you came in here to say goodbye. It’s late, so you don’t… we don’t have to put it off.”

Alexis stares at her, mystified. “What?”

Twyla sighs. Her voice is quiet, hovering above a whisper, as she says, “You’re… leaving, right? With that girl, your friend?” She watches Alexis’ mouth fall open and then snap shut again, and continues, “After you left this morning, one of the other girls she was with went to the washroom, and your friend started talking really loudly about how she hated working with her - I think maybe her name was Alba? - and she was going to fire Alba and offer _you_ her job. She said you’d totally take it because… ” Twyla’s mouth shifts around, making a shape sadder than a grimace. “Because look where you ended up,” she finishes on a sigh. “Alexis Rose, having to wake up _here_ every day; it was basically a miracle you hadn’t given up on yourself… ” She looks at the floor. “And I figured she was right. And I figured you would go.”

Alexis blinks several times before she manages to say, “ _No._ No. I’m - Twy, _no_. I’m not taking that job from Klair, and I’m not leaving. I’m staying here.”

There’s something so hopeful in Twyla’s expression that Alexis’ heart feels like it could crack in two. “You are?” she asks.

“Yes!” Alexis slides off the table she’s sitting on and reaches out, grasping Twyla’s forearms and pulling lightly until Twyla’s hands are out of her pockets. She takes both of Twyla’s hands in her own, folding her fingers firmly across Twyla’s palms, feeling the shift of delicate bones under Twyla’s soft skin. “I want to be a publicist. But I want to do it here, and I think I can do it myself. I _will_ do it myself - I don’t need Klair to make it happen, and honestly, I don’t even want her to.” She tilts her head, considering Twyla, whose eyes are somehow even more green with half the café’s fluorescents off. Alexis’ teeth dig into her bottom lip, and she says, “Twy, I should’ve said something to her, earlier. When she was so rude to you, about the water she ordered.”

Twyla shakes her head, one of her thumbs tapping absently against Alexis’ wrist. “It’s alright.”

“It’s not,” Alexis insists. “Kind of like - like how I used to be. Throwing muffins at you to get your attention.” She cringes at the memory of her past behaviour. “That wasn’t alright, either. And I’m sorry.”

“You were different then,” Twyla says, with another one of her unperturbed shrugs, one that seems easier, looser.

“More of an ass, you mean,” Alexis says wryly.

Twyla laughs through a small gasp. “That is _not_ what I said,” she protests, and then they’re both laughing, soft giggles that overlap and seem to fill the empty café.

Alexis squeezes Twyla’s hands. “Klair’s not my friend anymore,” she says. “I don’t think… that she ever really was. _You’re_ my friend.” She swallows quickly against a narrowing feeling in her throat. “Right?”

Firmly, and with a reciprocal squeeze of Alexis’ hands, Twyla says, “Right.”

With a grin, Alexis says, “I know you’re closed, but…” She tips her head toward the stools by the counter. “Do you think my friend might want to have a cup of tea with me?”

Twyla disentangles their hands, her fingers skimming lightly over Alexis’ palms. “Your friend thinks that sounds really nice.”

Alexis takes a seat at the counter while Twyla moves behind it, plucking two freshly-washed mugs up off a tray before she darts into the back to boil water. While she waits, Alexis glances out the windows at the streets of the town, dark save for the patches of light surrounding the streetlamps. It’s quiet, like the town is at peace, sinking into slumber alongside its residents before it stirs under bustling feet again in the morning. It looks and feels familiar to Alexis, homey and knowable, engulfed in patterns of life she can count on.

Full mugs in hand, Twyla circles the counter to take a seat on the stool next to Alexis’. She sighs happily, relieved to be off her feet, and drops a sugar cube into her tea.

“It’s good that you’re staying,” she says as she stirs the sugar in, her spoon clinking against the ceramic mug. She glances at Alexis’ face before tapping excess liquid off her spoon and setting it down neatly on a napkin. “I can just feel it.”

Alexis lifts her cup to her mouth, her elbow brushing Twyla’s, and smiles against its warm rim. She says, “Me, too.”

**four.**

“I don’t know,” Alexis says, holding the café door open for Twyla and leaning against it for a moment, twirling a lock of her hair, finally freed from its ponytail, idly around her index finger. “It’s that part with the kick right after the spin. I always feel like my leg’s in the air after everyone else’s.”

“Maybe that’s because you have the longest legs,” Twyla offers.

Alexis breathes a laugh, stepping away from the door. “I don’t think so,” she says. “I think I just can’t figure out the counts.”

“You will,” Twyla assures her. “Don’t worry. We can ask Cleo about it tomorrow; her timing’s always perfect.”

Something about the way Twyla says _we_ makes Alexis feel warm, despite the fact that she’s only wearing a linen shirt tied in a knot at her navel over her sports bra and capri-length leggings. She plucks at its collar as she takes a seat on a stool at the counter, pressing her fingers against her hot neck. “We did it,” she tells Twyla. “We did the whole thing, without stopping once.”

Twyla grins at her, both exhausted and exhilarated. “We did it,” she agrees, sitting down next to Alexis. She leans forward and calls, “George, can we get some fries? And water with ice?”

He peeks through the window, looking grumpy, as though he wants to protest Twyla’s request, but his expression changes when he sees them. “You two look like movie stars.”

Twyla laughs and drapes an arm across Alexis’ shoulders. She brings the back of her other hand up beneath her chin, adopting one of Alexis’ own signature poses. “Kit Kat girls five and six,” she says. “Your most glamorous patrons this evening.”

“Then I guess you’ll need extra ice,” he says with a wink, before disappearing out of sight again.

There’s another soft laugh from Twyla in response, as she drops the hand beneath her chin down to the countertop. Beneath all the stage makeup she’s still wearing from their dress rehearsal (most of it applied by Alexis’ sure hands), her cheeks look flushed. It’s a striking contrast, Twyla in one of her usual outfits, a soft, worn-in blue hoodie and jeans, her face still done up for the stage. It’s adorable, and also - alluring, somehow. The thought bolts through Alexis like lightning, sudden and sparking, and burns along her already-fevered skin.

Twyla gives Alexis’ shoulder a squeeze before she pulls her arm back toward her own body, her hand tracing its way lazily down Alexis’ spine. “Are you okay?” she checks.

“Yeah,” Alexis says, shifting in her seat so that her body’s pointed toward Twyla’s. “You did a really good job tonight, Twy.”

“Thanks,” Twyla says as George brings them condensation-foggy glasses of water and a basket of fries to share. In the face of the compliment, she looks both demure and gleeful. “It’s been so much fun, hasn’t it? We’ve never had a production like this before. Your mom changed everything.”

Alexis dunks a fry in ketchup. “Yeah. She has a habit of doing that.”

“It’s good,” Twyla says quickly, like she’s worried Alexis will think she means otherwise. “The ways some things have changed since your family moved here - they’re good. I don’t think I ever would have done something like this before.”

“Don’t tell my mom that,” Alexis cautions, half-smiling. She bumps Twyla’s knee with hers. “But I’m glad you told me.”

“What are friends for,” Twyla jokes, “if not secrets?”

 _What are friends for_ , Alexis thinks. Twyla’s basically taught her the answer to that question. Friends are not for photo ops and retweets and catamaran rentals. Friends are for serious talks and silly jokes, for liking you even when they don’t quite understand you, for sharing the tenderest parts of themselves if you’re willing to really listen; friends are patient and trusting and loyal. They’re for your rough moments, a cup of tea wordlessly placed on the table where Alexis remained after Mutt had silently walked away, and for your magical moments, the force of Twyla’s hug after Ted walked into the café and kissed her. They’re for this: knees touching, fries rapidly disappearing, feeling a little giddy, a little accomplished, a little nervous, hanging onto one another’s company after three hours spent under lights and in the wings together.

Things have changed in good ways for Alexis, too, since her family moved to Schitt’s Creek.

“Let’s do the next one, too,” she says abruptly.

Twyla lifts a curious eyebrow. “The next one?”

“Yeah. If _Cabaret_ ’s a success - and it will be, you’ve seen how good Stevie’s gotten - my mom won’t give up an opportunity to do it all again. We should both audition, for whatever the show is.”

“Yes,” Twyla agrees happily. She flashes a crooked little grin. “Hundred percent!”

And this is friendship too - teasing, and picking up each other’s mannerisms, and the playful ease that comes with knowing nothing being said to you is intended to sting, only to fondly nettle. Alexis scrunches her nose playfully at Twyla in response, and steals the long, crispy fry Twyla’s hand was headed for. Twyla actually _rolls her eyes_ \- just barely, but still - in response, which is something she does rarely enough that it gives Alexis a little thrill.

She wipes her greasy fingers on a napkin and says, “I should probably get going. I told Ted I’d try to be at his place before ten; he has an operation first thing. On a little bunny!” She tucks both hands up beneath her chin like paws, making a sad face on behalf of the sick rabbit, and then reaches for her purse. “How much - ”

Twyla gives her arm a gentle swat, and then gestures toward the kitchen. “On us.”

Alexis smiles affectionately at her as she stands. She taps her index finger on the counter. “Danke, Twy,” she says.

Twyla dimples back at her, that smile that erases everything else. “Wilkommen,” she responds, which Alexis knows, because she’s fluent, isn’t actually the correct way to say _you’re welcome_ in German, but the exchange still keeps a smile on her face throughout her four-block walk to the vet clinic.

**five.**

Six days after David and Patrick get married, on another rainy morning, they drive Alexis to Pearson International Airport for her flight to New York. After sniffling through their goodbyes, she checks her bags, passes through security, steps on one of the airport’s moving walkways - and kind of feels like she never gets off.

As she gets out of her Lyft in front of her new building, she thinks, initially, that Manhattan is different. It’s not until she’s standing in the empty, echo-y apartment she’s rented that she realizes it’s her, not the city, that’s changed.

She used to run along sidewalks, across busy streets, in and out of hotels and clubs and David’s galleries and her friend’s penthouses, sure of her every step, in spindly heels with red soles. There’s something different, now, about how she relates to the sidewalks, to the pavement, to the shiny floors of the lobby in the building that houses the Interflix offices. It all feels _new_ , like something she needs to relearn. She remembers Mutt, what feels like eons ago, the two of them painting over a graffitied dick, commenting that leaving Schitt’s Creek meant she’d be returning to her ‘natural habitat.’

The realization’s jarring enough that she nearly trips over her own feet, distracted: the girl that Mutt said that to doesn’t fully exist anymore.

Alexis likes her job at Interflix, likes her coworkers who are very sweetly enthused about her being there, likes being able to order takeout from all her old favourite restaurants, likes being able to purchase new dresses from Isabel Marant in person. She’s happy, she’s thriving, she’s just not quite… home.

She misses her parents and her brother more than she ever has before, now that they feel like a real family, but still - at least she has a blueprint for this situation in her history, a sense of how to be without them. It helps fill the parts of her heart that feel hollow to know that they’re all so happy: her mother, doing what she loves best, reclaiming her place in the spotlight; her father, always happiest when her mother is satisfied, settled contently again into an honest-to-god office; David, in a house he loves with a man he loves, immersed in a life of his choosing and his making.

What she lacks a model for is how to miss a place the way she misses Schitt’s Creek. Alexis used to lament that she wished she was in Tulum, or that it was totally tragic to be missing Tomorrowland, or that she _needed_ to get an apartment in Tokyo, but the truth was that she was good at being anywhere, and that she only really longed to change locations if she was caught up in some boring drama with Interpol, _again_. It’s different, what she’s feeling now, and it’s knocked her off balance.

She misses the routes she always used to run, the changing trees, the dusty old truck with a _FOR SALE_ sign on the dashboard that never moved, the lupins that grew at the roadside. She misses the smells of Rose Apothecary, handmade soaps and fresh herbs and sandalwood-scented candles. She misses the quiet at the very beginning of the day in the veterinary clinic, the way the sun came in through the windows and the computer whirred softly to life. She even misses her tiny room at the motel, hip-checking David away from the sink when she wanted to brush her teeth, the corner she set up as her workspace, the door that led to her parents’ room flying open when she was still trying to sleep.

She misses the café: its ridiculous decor, its giant menus, the somewhat-stale smell of coffee, the way people would call hello to one another like they hadn’t just seen each other in the exact same place the day before. She misses the sound of Twyla’s laughter, of her soft footfalls in her sensible sneakers, of the creepy voice she tried to muster up when discussing her murder mystery parties.

Alexis imagines Twyla standing behind the counter, apron tied around her waist, hair braided to keep it out of her face, an empty stool in front of her - and then, _worse_ , she imagines someone else sitting on the stool, a faceless woman making Twyla smile, tapping her fingertips against the countertop, listening to Twyla say _on the house._ The thought makes her brand-new mattress feel lumpy and uncomfortable, makes the light and the noise of the city feel grating. She tosses and turns until she finally whips off her eye mask, snatches her phone off her bedside table, and looks at Google Flights.

She’s not making enough money to impulsively book a flight to Toronto and reserve a rental car whenever she happens to miss sitting across from Twyla at Café Tropical, Twyla’s smile turned toward her, a mug between her hands, a happy little flutter in her chest.

She does it anyway.

It’s back to an American airport, then to a Canadian one, then into her rented SUV, up the 404, across highway seven, and then past the _Welcome to Schitt’s Creek_ sign, her own image painted into its background. She parks in Bob’s lot, leaving a note on the dashboard that says _It’s Alexis don’t tow me!!!!_ , and then strolls across the street, her body feeling oddly shivery, full of nervous energy.

The sign has changed above the café: now it reads _Twyla’s Café Tropical_ in a looping, turquoise font. She has a picture of the new sign, and Twyla beaming beneath it, saved in the folder of photos on her phone.

It’s about as busy in the café as Alexis would expect it to be just before three in the afternoon on a weekday, only a couple tables occupied. Twyla’s making the rounds with the coffee pot, wearing her apron over shorts and a knot-front shirt that used to belong to Alexis. Her back is to the door, and she calls, “Sit anywhere, I’ll be right with you!”

Alexis watches Twyla set a couple plates onto a bussing tray. She takes a slow breath in as she moves forward and reaches out a hand. At first, she means to tap Twyla on the shoulder, but at the last second, she touches a fingertip to Twyla’s back instead, finding the curve of Twyla’s spine beneath the black-and-white pattern on the shirt, and drags her finger downward.

Twyla whirls around and gasps sharply, one hand flying up to her mouth and the other moving upward, too, despite its grasp on the handle of the coffee pot, causing liquid to splash out of it, spilling over her hand and onto the floor. “ _Alexis!_ ” The delight on her face is shining and unchecked, but it vanishes within seconds as she adds, “Oh, _crap_ ,” and sets the coffee pot down, shaking droplets of coffee off her hand.

Alexis grabs Twyla’s wrist gingerly. “Oh my god, are you hurt?” she asks. “I didn’t mean to - ”

“No,” Twyla says, “no, it’s barely warm anymore - ” She cuts herself off with a laugh. “Alexis, you’re _here_!” she says, and then her arms are around Alexis, squeezing tightly. Her hand feels a little coffee-damp against Alexis’ dress, but she doesn’t care at all if it gets stained - she just squeezes Twyla in return, rocking them back and forth a little on their feet, too full of joy to stay still.

“What are you _doing_ here?” Twyla mumbles into her shoulder after a long moment, making no move to exit the hug.

Alexis breathes in the soft, citrusy scent of Twyla’s shampoo and flounders for a reason. “I… I really wanted a smoothie,” she says. “And nobody in New York makes smoothies like you do.”

Twyla pulls back just enough to meet Alexis’ eyes with her own, her hands still linked at the small of Alexis’ back. “I’m going to make you my best Meadow Harvest ever,” she says solemnly, then drops her arms. “Sit down, okay?”

“Okay,” Alexis agrees, grinning, and takes a seat on her usual stool by the counter, settling in to watch Twyla bustle around, searching for ingredients.

**\+ one.**

Alexis stays in her seat, sipping her smoothie and telling Twyla little things about New York and Interflix and her mother’s _Sunrise Bay_ publicity that hadn’t seemed important enough to include in text messages, until the dinner rush begins in earnest and Twyla’s too busy taking orders and delivering meals to chat.

Alexis waits until Twyla’s finished scribbling down orders for a family of five, then puts a hand against Twyla’s hip on her way toward the door. “I’ll see you later,” she says quickly, quietly.

Twyla turns around, her gaze intent and mildly apprehensive. “You’re - you’ll still be here tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” Alexis promises. She wants to hug Twyla, so she does, even though the suddenness of her embrace means that the tip of Twyla’s pen pokes against her ribs, leaving a mark.

“Okay,” Twyla says as they pull apart. Alexis can feel her breath along the skin of her neck, making goosebumps rise. She gives Twyla’s upper arm a little squeeze before she goes.

Outside, her feet trace an all-too-familiar diagonal path over to Rose Apothecary. David’s arranging scarves in a display basket, artistically draping them along its edges, so concentrated on his task that he doesn’t turn when she opens the door. Alexis watches him for just a second, her heart feeling full in her chest, and then says, “Hey, I’m looking for a guest room to crash in. Could I find one of those here?”

Her brother spins around. “Alexis,” he says. He starts to smile, which makes her smile, too, but his mouth flips itself into a frown an instant later. “What’s wrong?” he demands. “What happened?”

She blinks, frowning too in the face of his sudden interrogation. “Um, nothing? I’m visiting?”

“With no warning? Why?”

She crosses her arms and huffs, “Because I missed… _being here_ , David. Is that a crime?”

“Alexis, hey!” Patrick says, pushing past the curtains over the entrance to the stockroom. “It’s great to see you!”

She manages to smile at him and shoot David an annoyed look at the same time. “It’s great to see you, too, Patrick,” she says pointedly.

“Alexis,” David says, pronouncing her name in the same tone he’d use to describe a fungus, “would like to stay in our guest room.”

“Yeah, of course,” Patrick says - his eyes are saying something, too, to David, that Alexis can’t quite decipher. “We’re having fajitas for dinner, you okay with that?” he asks her.

“No,” David interrupts. “No fajitas until you explain yourself.”

“Ohmygod, David, _chill_ ,” Alexis says. “I just ate like an hour ago,” she tells Patrick, “but it’s _very_ nice of you to ask, favourite brother.” She flicks a finger through the air, giving him a from-a-distance nose boop, and then focuses on David again. She sees the tension on his face, at the corners of his mouth and eyes, and in his body, in the stiffness of his shoulders and the way he’s pushed the sleeves of his sweater up toward his elbows. “David,” she says in a gentler tone. “I’m just visiting. Nothing’s wrong.” She sighs and adds, “Give me a hug, okay?” before closing the distance between them in a few long strides and wrapping her arms around him.

His arms come up around her carefully, a soft touch at first, and then the rigid set of his shoulders loosens, relaxes, and it becomes a real hug as he pulls her body in closer to his. “You can stay in the guest room,” he murmurs. “Don’t count on there being any leftover fajitas.”

Alexis smiles into his shoulder. “I won’t.” As they release their hold on each other, she says, “I was hoping to get some tea, though?”

“Oh my god,” David says, sliding right back into irritation. “The café is _right_ across the street, Alexis!”

She rolls her eyes extravagantly in response. “No, like - tea that you _make_.”

David and Patrick exchange a glance, and she gives her foot several impatient taps against the floor.

Alexis hangs out for a couple hours, sitting on the checkout counter with Patrick’s laptop, helping with inventory. She leaves with David’s key, so she can let herself into their house, and a little paper bag of loose leaf rooibos. When she returns to her car, she finds a piece of paper stuck under the windshield wipers, a note that reads _HI ALEXIS - BOB_.

She drives around Schitt’s Creek, just because it’s something she hasn’t done in a while - past the town hall, the high school, the elementary school with its colourful playground equipment, the seniors’ centre, the pizza place, the bookstore-slash-post-office-slash-bike-repair-shop, the offices of Ray’s numerous businesses, the motel. As the sun sinks in the sky, she heads back toward the center of town, driving five blocks past the café before parking on the street.

She knows where Twyla lives because they used to walk home together from _Cabaret_ rehearsals, though she’s never actually been inside the little house. Its siding looks a bit worse for wear, and one part of the rail on the porch has vanished, but there’s a colourful, well-maintained garden out front, overflowing with flowers, and the door’s been painted lavender.

Alexis strolls up the short walkway and takes a seat on the steps leading up to the porch, realizing belatedly that she’s sitting on a patch of weeds springing up between the wooden boards that compose the step beneath her. She shifts over slightly. Her dress is becoming a small mess of stains from the day, coffee and ink and grass. She almost hopes they won’t come out when she sends off her dry-cleaning, hopes that today stays somewhere permanently, etched onto the rosy-pink fabric forever.

Twyla arrives home a little while later, her hair down and a cardigan pulled on to keep her warm in the cooling weather. “Hi!” she calls when she sees Alexis, and repeats her question from earlier in the day: “What’re you doing here?”

Alexis gets to her feet. “The same thing I was doing at the café,” she says half-smiling.

“I don’t really have anything to make a smoothie here,” Twyla says, fiddling with her keys. She looks so charmingly, profoundly apologetic. “But I could reopen the café, if you want to go ba - ”

“Twy.” Alexis shakes her head. “I love it when you make me smoothies. But not because - ” She stops and bites the corner of her bottom lip. “I love it when _you_ make me smoothies.”

Twyla’s keys jangle a little as she continues to play with them, looking up into Alexis’ face. “I like when you ask me to,” she says softly, simply. “It’s been different without you here.”

“It’s been different for me, too. I mean, _I’ve_ been different. I miss you. A lot.” She searches Twyla’s eyes and exhales a small laugh. “Like, _all_ the time.”

“Alexis.” Twyla reaches out like she wants to touch her, but her hand hovers in the air and then falls. “I miss you, too. Every day. I keep… waiting for you to walk through the door, even though I _know_ you’re in New York.”

“I miss that, too,” Alexis tells her. “Seeing you whenever I wanted. And I miss… I miss having chances to do the things I kind of feel like I should’ve done.”

“Like what?” Twyla asks, her voice hushed. Alexis wonders if her heart is pounding, too.

“I don’t know,” she says, even though she very much does. “Like… asked you to have dinner with me. Or lunch. Or coffee. Somewhere _besides_ the café. Or told you that I think you have the prettiest smile in the world, and I _mean_ that, because I’ve been a lot of places in the world. Or gone to The Wobbly Elm with you, but not for boys, just for… us. Or made _you_ something to eat or drink, for once.”

Twyla looks a little overwhelmed, taking quick breaths high in her chest. “Alexis - _you_ have the prettiest smile in the world,” is what she finally says.

Alexis laughs despite the way she can feel her pulse in her throat. “D’you think… I could come in?” Twyla’s already nodding, but Alexis bends down to pick up the paper bag she left on the step anyway. “I brought tea. For you. Us. I want to - can I make you a cup?”

“Oh!” Twyla says, a breath of surprise. She reaches out again, with greater purpose this time. Her fingers toy with one end of the bow at the waist of Alexis’ wrap dress; Alexis feels a thrill course through her body, from her shoulders to her toes. Twyla doesn’t tug at the sash, but she does wind its fabric, slowly and purposefully, around her index finger, before she rises onto her tiptoes to kiss Alexis - the gentlest, sweetest press of lips against lips, and yet it feels like a spark in Alexis’ mouth, dynamic and potent, a heat burning with promise, a latent desire electrified.

There’s a flush at the high points of Twyla’s cheeks, her skin a pink so deep it’s nearly red, but her voice is unwavering as she says, kindly, “No. No, I think I should make it.”

It takes Alexis a few seconds before her eyes stop flitting between Twyla’s pretty blush and pretty eyes and pretty mouth and her mind manages to refocus on the topic of their conversation: tea. “Okay,” she says, on a laugh so soft it’s almost shy.

“Okay,” Twyla echoes, her finger still wound up in the tie of Alexis’ dress.

Alexis hooks her own fingers into the belt loops of Twyla’s denim shorts, closing more of the space between their bodies. The tip of one of her espadrilles inches its way between the rubberized toes of Twyla’s sneakers.

Beneath their feet, the ground is steady and still.


End file.
